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Hamsamsquanch

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Everything posted by Hamsamsquanch

  1. Sorry an update took so long on this one, but I can't stand it when I am searching forums for info and people don't say how they resolved an issue. That rear control arm bushing is a POS. I got a poly bushing kit (Energy Suspension) for the whole front end and the shakes are all gone. Also did ball joints, wheel bearings (Timken) and tie rod ends since I was getting an alignment and they were cheap enough to replace all at once. Gotta go back in and reboot a CV axle that shredded the outboard boot soon as I got my summer tread on the car, though. Thanks for the input guys! Drives better than it ever has before, at least during my ownership. Total cost was like $600 since I had to have a shop do some of the press work. Used all MOOG parts except the wheel bearings, so I'll try and report back on how they hold up. It was already chewing through the endlinks since lowering, so I don't expect those to last too long.
  2. Yeah, I'd definitely pull the engine and drill the head before bothering with welding a bung into the exhaust. It's really only a daunting task the first time you do it. Drilling the hole isn't that bad either, you just have to get the location right.
  3. Fellow Oregonian here, got any family in a different county? You can also buy used plates with tags on them and transfer the plate to your car to buy some more time to sort out the problem. Unfortunately, that is a hard one to work around without major surgery.
  4. Any kits in particular you would recommend that has all of the front end bushings? Might as well just do all of them while it's apart.
  5. Didn't feel any play in them, but 140k is probably enough to kill a set. I'll have to see what I can get a set of CV's for since I'll be that far into it for the control arm bushings next weekend.
  6. Thanks for the warning. Could that assembly failing be what is going on here with the tight/overly sensitive steering wheel? I don't know how the previous owners treated the thing, so they could have been turning at the limits for the whole 81k. It hasn't ever lost fluid. But I don't know if it has ever been replaced now that I think about it.
  7. Thanks for the reply Dave! Sounds like different shakes, but I am getting a set of summer wheels and tires for the 98 soon. So I'll have to throw them on the 09, after verifying no balancing issues on the 98, to see if a 3rd set of new wheels fixes it. Do you know of anyone on here that has played with the steering racks on these things? I'd love to dial in a hair of slop just to see if that fixes it, but I also don't want to just randomly start turning bolts on the rack. The car has been great otherwise, but this problem pretty much makes it unusable now that all the highways here are paved with the "shaky" compound.
  8. And before someone says that I'm just being a baby, a month ago I did a 5k mile road trip in the 98 Impreza and didn't have any soreness whatsoever. I also never saw anywhere near as severe steering wheel movement as the 09, and I know the alignment isn't perfect on the 98.
  9. Would if I could :/ The steering wheel moves about an inch back and forth when I go over certain roads, but is buttery smooth on old back country roads regardless of speed. My arms actually went numb after 3 hours of driving on I5 today and my chest is still sore, 4 hours after getting home. I also had to quit driving this car to work recently since they re-paved I205 with not Subaru friendly pavement. If it wasn't actually causing problems with my body, I would write it off as just the roads. There is also the fact that none of my other cars (98 Impreza L, 91 Loyale, and an 03 Civic Si) have this issue with the same exact roads.
  10. Hey all! I am coming up on 6 years of ownership of my 09 Impreza and it has had the same shaky steering wheel problem the whole time. It only happens on certain roads and speeds over 65mph. It's also not specific to steering any direction or braking/accelerating. But again, only certain pavement compounds seems to cause it. Things I have done since buying the car (not all due to chasing this problem btw): - all new struts, springs and tophats - new sway bar endlinks all around - WRX rear sway bar addition (none stock) - new wheels and tires - alignments (At least 3, all by reputable shops) - brake rotors and pads all around, twice - tire rotations with every other oil change - wheel re-balancing a few times - trans and diffs drain and fill (auto trans) The car is 100% stock otherwise. CV's look good and engine/trans mounts aren't shredded. Only CEL to ever show up is P0420 intermittently. Anything else I should be looking at? Car has 140k miles on it and has been in my possession since 81k. I did notice while helping a buddy with his rig the other day, that my steering wheel has literally zero slop. All the other cars around me have some slop in the steering. Could this by chance be my issue?
  11. https://imgur.com/gallery/4Pgfz Sorry for the lack of updates on the project. I got her road worthy enough to daily with the EA82 and drove it for a while to feel out what suspension work was needed. Lost oil pressure and couldn't seem to get it back, so we made a death pool at work and I drove the hell out of her. Headgasket blew about a week later and she made it to about 100ft shy of the barn running on 2 cylinders. Pretty much have the engine pulled now. Going to be turning the EA into a sweet little coffee table. On the hunt for a donor car to get my AWD swap. Hoping to get this thing back on the road with an EJ by winter!
  12. Slowly but surely progress is being made. My girl and I just had our 2 year anniversary, so we went to the coast on vacation and drained my projects budget for the month in the process. Great trip, though! I got the gas pedal from a Legacy and modified it to work on my Loyale. Had to pull the stock pedal assembly out and cut the gas pedal portion off of it, so now the throttle is a free standing assembly from the brake and clutch. The Legacy pedal only needed the shaft bent up a bit to line up with the Loyale pedals and the Loyale cable end snapped in to the pedal shaft like it belonged. 2 bolts through the firewall is all it took to mount it. Works great now, no more sticky pedal! I do need to shorten the cable a bit since there is about 2 inches of play before the throttle actually gets pulled now. Was going to take her out camping and wheeling before teardown for the EJ conversion, but my ea82 alternator died. So I made a track through the woods in my backyard, charged up a battery and spun some laps until the rear CV axle that I didn't replace broke and took my dirtbike on that trip instead. Car is currently sitting in the barn again waiting for the EJ stuff and some money. Have been going back and forth on if I want to go AWD with it or not. 4.44 stuff is really expensive and hard to find. I might be able to score a 4.11 setup out of an RS though. Going AWD would open up clutch choices a lot and would save the hassle of making an adapter plate while giving me better gearing than my single range push button trans.
  13. Got the brakes bled and pedal feeling amazing. That old fluid was by far the worst I've ever seen (I always put a clear tube on the bleeders). It started out as vanilla milkshake looking, then transitioned to gross foamy crap, then got suuuuuper dark. After a little bit of dark it started looking like new fluid. After getting the brake fluid sorted, I found the cause of my throttle sticking at wide open... The pedal linkage is gummed up hardcore and is pretty rusty. Are there any pedal assemblies that would bolt up and work with my brake pedal/booster linkage??? I have access to a free late 90's legacy setup about 1.5 hours away, but I'm also going to pick 'n pull later today to get some Chevy parts for my dad and can grab something while I'm there. Gonna be starting the EJ process soon! Getting the EJ25 block cleaned up and ready for dissasembly. Will also be taking my EJ22 heads into work this weekend to get looked at by my ex-Subaru mechanic coworker.
  14. I live in Oregon City. So about an hour-ish drive to Johns. Definitely worth the (gorgeous!) drive out there for the pricing and the cool guys working there, though! My Civics brakes didnt like that descent down to his place much last time, though haha.
  15. The barn dried out and I finally made some more progress on this thing! Got all new brakes on all 4 corners. A soft line burst during bleeding, so I gotta make a replacement before its street worthy. When replacing the wheel bearing I ran into a cross threaded nut in the trailing arm holding the bearing in... So off to Johns subaru and got a replacement arm that is in better shape. Threw a new CV axle in on that side since the boots were torn up. Will be re-booting the old one and having it around as a spare. Will do the same with the other side soon. I did take the opportunity when the wheels were all on and ran her up and down the driveway using the handbrake to stop. https://imgur.com/a/25ya1 Running pretty good. Got a little bit of ticking going on, but that wont be a problem soon. Im getting a phase 1 EJ25 tonight! Gonna have a mechanic friend go through the heads and help me out putting it all together.
  16. $40 a piece new for rears on Rockauto. Picked up a set to have around for when my Loyale decides to eat one.
  17. Thank you so much for your responses and answering questions! Heres my reasons for stripping the vacuum components down: - I'm trying to get this engine bay as clean and simple as possible. Ive never had a clean and truly simple FI engine bay, so I'm gonna make this one my first. - All of the little vacuum lines really need to be replaced immediately (most small lines crack/break if moved). If they didn't NEED to be there in the first place, I'd rather spend the time and money elsewhere. - The added piece of mind of not having these systems possibly causing random little problems when out on the trail is nice. - Quicker diagnosing of running issues when there are less components at play. If I had to pass emissions, I would definitely be going the Toyota solenoids route. But I registered this hoopty in a county with no testing because I knew I would have some exhuast or vacuum issue triggering BS codes at some point, especially after the OBD2 EJ swap
  18. https://imgur.com/gallery/cFnhn If you look at the line with a screw in it, it should be rotated down and going into the solenoid there. The fitting for the hose is broken off of it though. I left that plugged then also plugged the line that immediately T's into the intake. Just for clarification, if this is the vapor thing, it is okay to run my car like this? Not gonna run like crap when its warmed up or use substantially more fuel? Would love to get rid of the canister, solenoid and the lines for all of that stuff and maybe even the EGR valve stuff if I can.
  19. Thanks for the info! Looking around at diagrams, I thought it was the purge solenoid but the pictures I was finding of that part didnt match what I was looking at... It also didnt have any lines going to the EGR. So maybe its an aftermarket one that looks different? In any case, the fitting for the line was broken off and left open. The lines going out of it T'd off to the intake and going up to a canister on the firewall that had some pressure/vacuum in it when I pulled the line off. Plugged the lines right where that solenoid was, on both ends and it ran perfect. I dont know if it would begin running worse when warm now though... Brakes are all torn apart right now so I didnt take it for a rip around the block yet. Should I be doing something different with that situation?
  20. No pictures on this post, because nothing really worth taking pictures of has happened lately! Rain has been flooding my barn where the project is parked But I got to do some wrenching this weekend! Put the nicer set of seats I got in and got the goop that was left on the floor by the old modly carpet all cleaned up. Gotta find some velcro strips to hold my limp sun visors up Also inspected my front brakes and now I have to replace disks and pads up there before I drive it again. Found the source of a major rattling noise while inspecting the passenger side! The bushing on the sway bar endlink is completely, 100%, gone. Since it'll be a trail rig and is getting lifted, I'm just gonna drop that piece of metal. I also took some time and got my vacuum problem sorted. A solenoid controlling the idle speed (I think?) is broken and I cant find a new replacement... Plugged off the lines and she runs tits! No raised cold idle, but the idle is smooth as silk now and it revs perfect. Will let me cleanup the engine bay a bit more, too. Still havent tackled the wiring harness... My coworker that used to work for Subaru is finding the wiring diagrams I need, so progress on my 1st harness trim will be starting before too long. Also havent had any luck finding a disk conversion for the rear locally so far. Might have to go through with making my own hubs out of the old drums.
  21. Thanks for the image! Your design looks a bit easier to obtain than my original thought.
  22. https://imgur.com/gallery/jPXzC Heres the print I drew up quick for the rear lift. I believe 45° is what I have read in my digging through old threads? Anyone care to make some revisions to my design? Planning to do nuts and bolts for securing the strut to the plate. Also included a picture of the hole I'm designing a cab light for. Remembered why I dont care for 3D printed parts haha. The holes came out way undersize so I'm gonna have to bore those out Sunday night at work. Looks like the bolt pattern is slightly too large as well, but that could also be the printers fault. Left my dang laptop in my toolbox at work, so I wont be able to do any CAD work this weekend.
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